Disaster Risk Management and Vulnerability Reduction: Protecting the Poor

A paradigm shift in the development sector – from income poverty to human poverty – has been paralleled in the disaster management sector by a shift from seeing disasters as extreme events created by natural forces, to viewing them as manifestations of unresolved development problems. This has led to increased emphasis on integration of poverty reduction programs with other sectoral issues such as environmental management, gender and public health. However, examples of systematic long-term integration of such programs with the disaster management sector are few.

Over the past few decades, there was an exponential increase in human and material losses from disaster events, though there was no clear evidence that the frequency of extreme hazard events had increased. This indicated that the rise in disasters and their consequences was related to a rise in people’s vulnerability, induced by human-determined paths of development. An evolution in approaches – from relief and response to vulnerability analysis to risk management – has started influencing how disaster management programs are now being planned and financed. As it is becoming clear that the nature of people’s vulnerability is complex and varied, linkages between poverty and vulnerability are being explored. Three approaches to doing this include a livelihood framework from the bilateral development aid context, community-based disaster management from that sector, and risk transfer and finance from multilateral development finance institutions.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been in the forefront of recognizing the adverse impact of disasters on development and has played a pioneering role in promoting the incorporation of disaster reduction in development planning. ADB can set an example by making disaster risk assessment an integral part of the proposal approval process and by adopting appropriate mitigation measures in project implementation. Poverty reduction and disaster reduction programs can mutually support each other by developing innovative, multi-dimensional, inter-sectoral approaches.

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Source: University for Peace

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